Real Villains Wear Pink
by jackwabbit
Summary: The X-Files/Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog X-Over. Gen, Humor. Characters: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Captain Hammer, The Pink Pummeler. Season: TXF post S6, DHSAB pre Act 3. No real spoilers. Summary: Proof Is Always Just Out Of Mulder’s Reach.


**Real Villains Wear Pink**

Fandom: The X-Files/Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Rated: PG

Category: Crossover, Gen, Humor, Maybe Just A Bit Cracky.

Major Characters: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Captain Hammer, and The Pink Pummeler.

Season: X-Files Characters Are Post Season Six. DHSAB Characters Are Pre-Act III.

Spoilers: General Series Knowledge In Both Cases, Very Mild For TXF 'Dreamland'.

Summary: Proof Is Always Just Out Of Mulder's Reach.

---

Fox Mulder had seen his share of weirdness, so he wasn't terribly surprised when he opened his eyes after being engulfed in a blinding blue light to find his surroundings had changed considerably.

He'd been in the doorway to his office a moment ago. Now, he stood on a nearly empty sidewalk. As he looked slowly around, he knew he was nowhere near his office anymore. After all, there were no palm trees in Washington, and there was an abundance of them here.

In fact, except for the lack of people and the fact that there were no cars on the road, Mulder would've sworn he was in Los Angeles. The place just screamed California. He fished a sunflower seed out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth as he finished his initial surveillance and started to slowly stroll down the street. He sighed. After swapping bodies with someone, opening the door to his office and suddenly finding himself on the streets of LA seemed almost commonplace, but that didn't keep it from being a pain in the ass.

Mulder pulled his cell phone out of another pocket and punched speed dial one, but before he could get his phone to his ear to see if Scully picked up, a tremendous crash thundered around him and he dropped the phone. He instinctively ducked and pulled his gun from its holster. As he knelt behind the pathetic cover of a free-standing mailbox, another crash echoed off the buildings on either side of the street.

Mulder zeroed in on the source of the tremendous noise at once. A car had crashed into the lower level of an office building on the far side of the street, and another had rammed into its back end. At first, Mulder thought imbecile drivers were to blame for the accident, but then he remembered that the street had been strangely devoid of traffic only seconds ago. When he noticed that not only were the cars unoccupied but that the people inside the damaged building were not paying attention to them but instead stared out into the street and looked around as if expecting something to fall on them at any time, Mulder knew that this was something more than a simple accident. He looked around more carefully and saw that the faces surrounding the crashed cars weren't the only ones pressed up against glass.

Every building was swarming with people, and every face held a mixture of awe and fear as they peered out into the street. No one was even thinking about coming outside, though, and not a single soul offered to let Mulder in. Something very strange was going on here.

Mulder started to scan the area for the source of the bystander's fear, but before his eyes had panned two feet, the cause of their concern became obvious.

A man suddenly landed on the bashed-up cars as if he'd been thrown there by a giant invisible hand.

The man's outfit was so ridiculous that Mulder snorted a small laugh despite the situation and thought that he must be right about being in California. No grown man would wear that much pink anywhere else in the world. The carnation boxing gloves and knee-high boots were a definite give-away all alone, but the large pink emblem on the man's shirt and his matching Zorro mask only confirmed Mulder's theory of his location. Mulder's sick sense of humor immediately labeled the man 'Pinkie.'

As Pinkie tried to dust himself off and stand, another man came bounding into Mulder's view. This one wore a blue shirt emblazoned with a large hammer insignia and huge black gloves. He was covering ground with giant leaps of about fifteen feet each. He also seemed to be humming some strange song to himself. To Mulder, it sounded like the tune was about something 'a hand's got to glue.' He tried to tune out the thoughts that brought to mind. He shook his head and started to wonder if he'd had some bad Chinese food the previous night with The Gunmen. This was getting stranger and stranger. Clearly, the new guy, who Mulder instantly called 'Hammertime', was proof of that.

Hammertime leapt onto the crashed cars and grabbed Pinkie by his shirt front before he could stand. He shook the slightly smaller man a bit and sneered into his face.

"Pummeler!" he belted out. "I see you've managed once again to completely screw up a heist! I should thank you for the entertainment! As should all of these fine folk!"

The man gestured to the faces in the windows and assumed a pose that only John Wayne (or maybe Captain Morgan) could pull off.

Mulder blinked. It was all he could do not to laugh. Was this guy for real?

Apparently, he was. Hammertime lifted his foe high in the air and spoke again. "Now, go back and tell your boss that Captain Hammer is on the job!"

Mulder frowned a bit, then shrugged. So, it was 'Captain Hammer' and not 'Hammertime.' He could live with that. He watched as Captain Hammer hurled his enemy down the street for the second time inside a minute. Pinkie bounced off of several buildings before coming to rest on the ground. To Mulder's astonishment, he stood and limped away after a moment as Captain Hammer climbed down from the wreckage of the two cars.

People began to file out of the buildings and into the street. A few cars slowly crept out of parking garages and side streets. Captain Hammer grandly waved the people and the cars out of their hiding spaces. He smiled broadly and accepted a hundred congratulations before bounding off again.

Once the hero of the moment was gone, Mulder slowly stood and holstered his gun.

As he did so, a young boy noticed his weapon.

"Is that a real gun, Mister?" asked a small voice.

Mulder nodded. "Sure is."

"What do you have that for? You don't look like a gangster. Or a cop."

Mulder grimaced. "I'm neither. I'm an FBI agent."

"Oh," said the boy, unimpressed. "How come you had that out?"

"My gun?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I thought there was trouble, and…"

The boy laughed. "Why would there be trouble? Besides crashed cars and stuff? Don't you know Captain Hammer always saves the day?"

Mulder's brow furrowed and he jerked a thumb in the direction Captain Hammer had gone. "That guy?"

The boy wasn't listening. "Well, ok, so sometimes it's the Cyan Cyclist or Admiral Arrow or…"

Mulder interrupted. "Admiral Arrow?"

The boy looked at Mulder like he'd gone insane. "Yeah, Admiral Arrow. You know. Rides around on a little hoverboard thingy and shoots arrows at the bad guys? How can you not know Admiral Arrow?"

"I'm not from around here," answered Mulder.

"What? Are you, like, from Venus or something?" said the boy. "I bet you don't even know the members of the ELE! Or that wannabe Doctor Horrible! He was around here earlier. Shooting off some sort of ray gun. Bet there's all sorts of weirdness left over from that one!"

"Doctor Horrible? ELE? Ray gun?"

The boy nodded enthusiastically. Nothing he was saying made much sense to Mulder, but the phrase 'all sorts of weirdness left over' was starting to force two and two together in terms of how he'd been transported here.

"Yeah, the Doc was shooting things. See that tree over there? See how it's all blown up? He did that. But Captain Hammer chased him off, just like he did just now with the Pink Pummeler"

Mulder shook his head. So, Pinkie was apparently a villain. The Pink Pummeler. Wow. And Mulder thought being called 'Fox' was bad. He had nothing on that guy. Everything was starting to get muddy in his mind, so he asked the boy to confirm things.

"So, that guy who just left. The hero guy. Who was that again?"

The boy grinned. "Captain Hammer. He's my favorite! Check this out!"

The boy yanked a backpack off his shoulders and threw it to the ground. He knelt and rummaged in it for a moment, then produced an exact likeness of Hammertime and held it up to Mulder, who took it.

"I just got this last month," explained the boy. "Bobby Williams wants to trade me for it, but I said no way. You can't find a Captain Hammer anywhere! I got lucky on this one! My cousin in Indiana found it behind a bunch of toy cars or something. Isn't it great?"

Mulder nodded and handed the action figure back to the boy, who started to put it back into his bag, then gasped.

"Dude! I forgot I had him in here! Look! I got Pinkie in here, too!"

Mulder smiled at the boy's moniker for the figure he held up now. It seemed he wasn't the only one who thought Pinkie, while still leaving plenty of room for improvement, was a better name than The Pink Pummeler.

"For a long time, they didn't make villains 'cuz they didn't want us kids thinking they were cool," explained the boy. "But we all made our own and eventually they realized we'd buy them if they made them 'cuz we wanted to have battles so now we have them! I'm gonna recreate today's fight when I get home!"

Mulder took the figure from the boy and inspected it for a moment. Now that he could look at it closely, Pinkie's shirt logo was two Ps back-to-back. 'Pink Pummeler,' thought Mulder. 'Wow.'

The boy reached up and took his toy from Mulder and shoved it back into his bag.

"Well, I gotta run, man. Gotta meet my mom. Later!"

Mulder nodded again as the boy took off. He started walking down the street with the other people who were now going about their day as if nothing had happened. They'd just seen a full-blown superhero battle in the street and seemed to have already forgotten about it. And Mulder himself had just handled an action figure of a real-life superhero - one that was known not only in California, but apparently at least as far away as Indiana.

A huge grin split Mulder's face. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or if he'd somehow been transported to an alternate reality or what, but he frankly didn't care.

There were superheroes here! Real, honest-to-God superheroes!

This was the find of the century!

Mulder's mind raced with questions. Were these guys natural genetic mutants or the results of government experiments or aliens or…oh, the possibilities were endless! Mulder nearly skipped in his excitement, and he no longer cared about how he'd managed to get to this place. This was great!

He rounded a corner and found himself facing a copy store advertising hourly rentals for onsite computers. He rushed to the door. If he could get online, if they even had the internet here, he could find out more about this place. He pulled open the door and stepped inside.

The moment he did, a blinding blue light surrounded him. He groaned. It was just like the one from earlier.

When the light faded this time, Mulder was completely unsurprised to find himself back in his office. He was standing in the doorway, with one hand still on the doorknob. Scully was staring at him from behind his desk.

"You going to stand there all day, Mulder? Maybe investigate the effect of open doorways on the thermodynamics of the office?"

Mulder answered without thinking. "Yeah, yeah. Sorry. It gets cold when the door's open. Right."

He stepped inside the office and shut the door.

Scully looked at him oddly. "Are you ok, Mulder?"

Mulder met her eyes and beamed back at her. Scully sighed. "Uh-oh," she said. "I know that look."

"But you don't understand, Scully! There were superheroes! Real ones!"

One perfect red eyebrow rose. "Really? Did they wear capes? Or tights? Or both?"

"Actually, neither. But they did seem to like gloves a lot."

"Gloves?" Scully was in full smirk mode now.

Mulder ignored the expression. "Yes! One guy had big black ones, and the other one - he was the villain - he had pink boxing gloves on. And…"

Scully burst out laughing.

Mulder stopped speaking. He knew what he sounded like, and he knew he stood no chance of convincing Scully of the truth of anything he'd just seen, especially since he still wasn't sure of it himself this time.

He sighed. Scully kept laughing.

"Pink boxing gloves?" she finally managed.

Mulder held up his right hand. "God as my witness."

Scully wiped a tear from her eye. "Really?"

"Yes, really. What's wrong with pink boxing gloves?"

Scully rolled her eyes. "Nothing. But on a supervillain? Really?"

"Well, to be fair, I think he was small potatoes in the villain world, but still… maybe he was just very secure in his masculinity."

Scully burst out laughing again.

Mulder snorted. There was only one way to save face here. He shook his head and let his snort turn into something more. It was hard not to in the face of Scully's hysterics. He laughed for a second, then caught Scully's eye and put on his best smug face.

"I had you big time."

Scully laughed again and Mulder joined her. After a moment, they started their work day as if this type of exchange happened every day, but Scully noticed that Mulder kept casting suspicious glances at the door all day.

That night, after a perfectly routine day of paperwork, Scully thought about Mulder's ranting as she dressed for bed. The way he'd looked when he'd frozen in the door for a moment and the way he kept looking at the doorway all day gave her some cause for concern.

Her medical training kicked in and she couldn't help but think that perhaps something was wrong, after all. 'Could he have really seen something?' she wondered. 'Is he hallucinating again? Should I get him a CT scan? A tox screen?' As she slid under her covers, Scully was still a bit worried until she remembered one detail of Mulder's latest crazy story. Then she snorted a laugh and dismissed her worries.

It was the pink boxing gloves that did it.

Even Scully knew that no self-respecting male supervillain would be caught dead in pink boxing gloves. Only Mulder could come up with something that patently ridiculous. He was insane, alright, but no CT in the world would be able to diagnose his problem.

Scully drifted off to sleep ashamed of herself for taking Mulder even a bit seriously but with a big grin on her face. She was already working on how she was going to get him back for this one.

Across town, Mulder's only thought was of a shiny plastic action figure and how stupid he'd been not to steal it from that kid.

Once again, proof had slipped through his fingers. Proof not only of the plausibility of the existence of non-human beings living on Earth but of his adventure this morning and something even more important.

Scully could scoff all she wanted, but he knew the truth.

Real villains wear pink.


End file.
